19 best-selling adult books like Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Cover of Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Death in Her Hands

By: Ottessa Moshfegh

3.24

Format: 259 pages, Hardcover

A novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she fi…

"When you die, leave not a trace. Sweep up any evidence of your existence."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"How did people go on with their lives as though death weren't all around them?"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"Suspicion invites danger, doesn't it? Keep the imagination soft and happy, and only good things will come."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"But people lied all the time. It was a part of what kept us whole as individuals. A little lying never hurt anybody. It kept the bounds of what one person was distinct from what another person was."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

If you liked the adult plot in Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh , here is a list of 19 books like this:

Cover of Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, David  Thomson

1. Play It As It Lays

By: Joan Didion , David Thomson

3.92

Format: 231 pages, Paperback

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of a… read more

Similar categories in Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"The letter is still in my makeup box but I am careful not to read it unless I am drunk"

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

"Carter and Helene still ask questions. I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing. The answer is “nothing."

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

"Carter and Helene still believe in cause-effect. Carter and Helene also believe that people are either sane or insane."

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

"She could remember it all but none of it seemed to come to anything. She had a sense the dream had ended and she had slept on."

-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

Cover of The Idiot by Elif Batuman

2. The Idiot

By: Elif Batuman

3.66

Format: 423 pages, Hardcover

A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself… read more

Similar categories in Elif Batuman's The Idiot book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"For a while now, I have been conscious of a tension in my relationship with you,"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Lighting a match felt exciting and a little bit dangerous, and when the flame came into contact with the paper, it made a sound like the needle coming down on a record player—like the music was about…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"For the first time in my life, I couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted to study or to do. I still had the old idea of being a writer, but that was being, not doing. It didn't say what you …"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the point of writing wasn't just to record something past but also to prolong the present, like in One Thousand and One Nights, to stretch out the time until the…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

Cover of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

3. The Virgin Suicides

By: Jeffrey Eugenides

3.79

Format: 250 pages, Paperback

The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out… read more

Similar categories in Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
"She was the still point in the turning world."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

"In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

"During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

"Aloft, he looked frail, diseased, and temperamental, as we expected a European to look."

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

Cover of I Who Have Never Known Men by Ros Schwartz, Jacqueline Harpman

4. I Who Have Never Known Men

By: Ros Schwartz , Jacqueline Harpman

4.22

Format: 208 pages, Paperback

"As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker." A young woman is kept in a cage underg… read more

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • novels
"Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Only now, I tell myself that what I'd felt for her, the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were prob…"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

Cover of Rouge by Mona Awad

5. Rouge

By: Mona Awad

3.56

Format: 383 pages, Kindle Edition

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lone… read more

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Cover of Bunny by Mona Awad

6. Bunny

By: Mona Awad

3.50

Format: 305 pages, Paperback

We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. … read more

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Bunny book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"The pink pony inside me weeps softly."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Oh, Bunny, I love you. I love you, Bunny."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"We think of it as art meets life, Bunny. We’re putting art into the world."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Because life is shorter than we are, she says, so why beat around the bush?"

-Mona Awad, Bunny

Cover of Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

7. Paradise Rot

By: Jenny Hval

3.55

Format: 160 pages, Paperback

A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imager… read more

Similar categories in Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • horror
  • audiobook
"I took a bite of a Bloody Ploughman. Even the flesh was red. 'Bloody,' Carral said. 'Nice colour,' I answered. 'It looks sinful. I bet that was the apple Eve ate, you know, in the Bible, the forbidde…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

"I'll tell you the fairy tale of the apple. Eve ate the apple, and then Adam came and did so too. Afterwards the apple was forgotten, and it was assumed that it rolled away in the grass while Adam and…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

Cover of Penance by Eliza  Clark

8. Penance

By: Eliza Clark

3.90

Format: 336 pages, ebook

Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you li… read more

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Penance book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details…"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

Cover of Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth

9. Motherthing

By: Ainslie Hogarth

3.67

Format: 288 pages, Paperback

A darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husba… read more

Similar categories in Ainslie Hogarth's Motherthing book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • mystery thriller
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Too much human touching will change a thing."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"A Good Woman butchers her meat properly, without cruelty."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"I bubble again with blinding-hot, spine-severing cumshitkill."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"I can save you. With Secrets of a Famous Chef I can save you."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

Cover of Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

10. Earthlings

By: Sayaka Murata

3.60

Format: 247 pages, Hardcover

Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witc… read more

Similar categories in Sayaka Murata's Earthlings book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Sobreviver, haja o que houver."

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

"O senso comum é uma doença contagiosa e é difícil manter a infecção sozinho."

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

"I thought that when I grew up society would brainwash me, but it didn't work."

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

"Até quando eu teria de sobreviver? Será que algum dia poderia apenas viver e não sobreviver?"

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

Cover of A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers

11. A Certain Hunger

By: Chelsea G. Summers

3.77

Format: None pages, Audible Audio

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Doro… read more

Similar categories in Chelsea G. Summers's A Certain Hunger book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"I enjoy a man who’s kissed with a yeasty beastliness."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"Junk food was rebellion, rebellion was femininity, femininity was junk."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"I knew from a young age that motherhood was a cage I never wanted to inhabit."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

Cover of The Guest by Emma Cline

12. The Guest

By: Emma Cline

3.29

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestsel… read more

Similar categories in Emma Cline's The Guest book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Younger men had to make everything mean something, had to turn every choice and preference into a referendum on their personality."

-Emma Cline, The Guest

"He assumed her attention when he spoke. He had his insecurities, his anxieties. But underlying it all was the certainty that the world would be generous in its orientation toward him."

-Emma Cline, The Guest

"All the women in the show hated each other, hated each other so much, just so they could avoid hating their husbands. Only their little dogs, blinking from their laps, seemed real: they were the wome…"

-Emma Cline, The Guest

Cover of Death Valley by Melissa Broder

13. Death Valley

By: Melissa Broder

3.49

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has… read more

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Death Valley book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"My body is the real problem here. If I could be bodiless - or at least, senseless - I’d be better off."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"Stop placing so much value on the known, I tell myself. Fake like this is the hero’s journey. It’s good to get lost. Good for the soul. But how lost is the good amount of lost? If I die here, is that…"

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

Cover of Brutes by Dizz Tate

14. Brutes

By: Dizz Tate

3.18

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in this wildly original debut—a coming-of-age story a… read more

Similar categories in Dizz Tate's Brutes book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"to be loved, was just to be watched"

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"We feel chased. It doesn't matter if it's only by our own shadows."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"and now I think that to humiliate a woman is the only way some men know how to love one."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"To be loved was just to be watched, or in my case, to imagine you are loved is to imagine you are watched all the time."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

Cover of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

15. Big Swiss

By: Jen Beagin

3.68

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is … read more

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Cover of Boy Parts by Eliza  Clark

16. Boy Parts

By: Eliza Clark

3.77

Format: 304 pages, ebook

Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for … read more

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Boy Parts book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"My mam always used to tell me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he's got a taste for vinegar. It's like vinegar is all he's ever had from peop…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"You want to think you're not like other women, but you are, you know. You're still... that's still how the rest of the world, how men are going to see you. Like, I know you hate labels, but you like.…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"Do you like it rough? I think so. I think I must. Men are rough, aren't they? Have I always had a taste for rough stuff, or did I acquire that? In the back of Lesley's car, on the floor of a friend's…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

Cover of Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

17. Milk Fed

By: Melissa Broder

3.57

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god from the… read more

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Milk Fed book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"This interplay between hope and reality was also a part of the mourning."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"There are emanations of god we can’t even see. What’s important is that you feel it."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"Life was a lot less bleak when you were staring straight down the barrel of a burrito."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"I wanted a love contingent on nothing finite. I wanted a love without end. Everyone was always saying you had to give it to yourself. Self-love, self-love."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

Cover of Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

18. Ripe

By: Sarah Rose Etter

3.63

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a … read more

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"If the brain is elastic and memory is faulty, maybe all of these stories are wrong. Maybe it happened a different way altogether. Maybe I was happy and I just forget that now."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

Cover of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

19. Nightbitch

By: Rachel Yoder

3.54

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else... A… read more

Similar categories in Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"In such moments, she could almost touch her loneliness, as if it were her second child."

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

"Her secrets were the only things these days that were purely hers, things apart from mother and wife and middle-aged woman."

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

"Yes, certainly, her emerging rage was in part a by-product of physiological processes, but how could you not be pissed after having a baby?"

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

"It had been so long since she had remembered all this, so long since she'd even thought of it, for there had been a great forgetting when she left home--a purposeful forgetting, because to forget her…"

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

Cover of All's Well by Mona Awad

20. All's Well

By: Mona Awad

3.74

Format: 384 pages, Paperback

Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career le… read more

Similar categories in Mona Awad's All's Well book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"I'm supposed to feel bad that I'm better now? I'm supposed to cry over a little cut. To what? To make you feel like I'm not a monster. I need to perform my little bit of pain for you so you'll know I…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well

"I gesture to the window and smile. Budding branches. Pale green leaves. Spring. Spring, does she see that? A time when everything is in bloom. Everything is having sex. Everything is so damp and frag…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well

"But not too much pain, am I right? Not too much, never too much. If it was too much, you wouldn't know what to do with me, would you? Too much would make you uncomfortable. Bored. My crying would lea…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well

"What, am I supposed to feel guilty?" I say. He looks confused. "Guilty?" "That I feel fine for once? That I'm not limping and moaning around? Dragging my leg like Briana? Lying on the floor, crying i…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well

Cover of Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

21. Death in Her Hands

By: Ottessa Moshfegh

3.24

Format: 259 pages, Hardcover

A novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she fi… read more

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"When you die, leave not a trace. Sweep up any evidence of your existence."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"How did people go on with their lives as though death weren't all around them?"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"Suspicion invites danger, doesn't it? Keep the imagination soft and happy, and only good things will come."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

"But people lied all the time. It was a part of what kept us whole as individuals. A little lying never hurt anybody. It kept the bounds of what one person was distinct from what another person was."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

21 must-read fiction books like Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Transform Your Habits

Play It As It Lays

Joan Didion , David Thomson

3.92

Transform Your Habits

The Idiot

Elif Batuman

3.66

Transform Your Habits

The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides

3.79

Transform Your Habits

I Who Have Never Known Men

Ros Schwartz , Jacqueline Harpman

4.22

View all the books

20 Top fiction books like Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Transform Your Habits

I Who Have Never Known Men

Ros Schwartz , Jacqueline Harpman

4.22

Transform Your Habits

Acts of Desperation

Megan Nolan

3.74

Transform Your Habits

Rouge

Mona Awad

3.56

Transform Your Habits

Our Wives Under the Sea

Julia Armfield

3.78

View all the books

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